Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25167 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 176 pages

Review
Following the discovery and publication of the French novelist's Suite Francaise (2006), here's another lost work: a short elegiac novel about the brief yet passionate loves and infidelities of youth. The best guess is that Nemirovsky (1903 - 1942) worked on this novel between 1938 and 1942, when she was deported to Auschwitz. The first-person narrator is Silvio, a middle-aged man living in Burgundy, an agriculturally rich region whose small landowners and farmers are suspicious and dour. As a young man, Silvio left this stifling community to sow his wild oats and work his way around the world, "propelled forward by the fire in my young blood" - echoes of Joseph Conrad's Youth. Now, all passion spent, his inheritance squandered and his lands sold, he lives alone with only his dog for company. Nearby live his cousin Helene and her husband Francois, a devoted couple, the picture of domestic tranquility. The marriage of their daughter Colette to Jean, a gentle young miller, sets the plot in motion. Early in their marriage, Colette takes a lover, experiencing like Silvio that "fire in the blood." There is, however, a complication. The lover, Marc, already has a liaison with another woman, the unhappily married ward of Helene's half-sister. One night there is an "accident"; Jean is found dead in the river. It emerges that Jean had lost a struggle with another man; Francois, never dreaming his daughter had a lover, wants to involve the police. Eventually Colette's parents learn the truth, which in turn forces Helene to make a stunning confession of her own about her young, passionate self, and induces in Silvio the great mournful cry, "I want my youth back." There is one puzzling omission at the end which suggests Nemirovsky, a careful plotter, had loose ends to tie up. Neither a masterpiece nor a curiosity but an elegant expression of universal longings rooted in a specific milieu, provincial France, that's observed with a caustic brilliance. (Kirkus Reviews)

Sunday Times
`A literary find of the same quality as Suite Francaise.'

Scotland on Sunday
`This novella takes humanity in all its guises and captures the deep-seated desire for belonging and understanding.'

Customer Reviews

Wonderful
What a wonderful book. Lyrical and atmospheric, this book is a story told by Silvio about his family in the early last century who live in a little village in rural France. What starts out gently and as a story of great love between the various family members quickly descends into secrets, lies, betrayal and grief.

I picked this book up this morning and read the first page to see how I liked it and before I knew it I have read the whole things while barely pausing for breath. A lovely book and I shall certainly be reading more by this author.

Fine novel by Nemirovsky, if probably unfinished
Irene Nemirovsky's short novel, written before her arrest and subsequent death in Auschwitz in 1942, was considered lost (there was a partial text of the first pages) and was only found on 2007 (!). Nevertheless, everything indicates this is not the final draft, and had she lived to publish it a different version would have arrived to us. The book itself is a tale of secret passions in a French small town. The arrival of Silvio, a single man in his sixties, to his home town, after a lifetime of living abroad, lets secrets hidden under the cover of normalcy and boredom out of the closet; a lot of it it's beguiling, but it also feels incomplete: for example, the relationship between Silvio and Brigitte (fundamental, given what we find in the book's last pages) is curiously underworked: this lets me to think we should consider this book to be an unfinished work. Despite this, it is another fine work by the Russian-born Jewish-raised French author, whose books have gone through a revival in the last few years.

A delightful read, another Nemirovsky masterpiece
After reading Suite Francaise, which I absolutely LOVED, I was a little bit anxious that this other "new" book (that found the day of light after so many years in oblivion) will not fulfil my expectations...but the hell it did, what a brilliant book!

Although it is way too short, and it is obvious that Ms Nemirovsky intended to write a lot more, fortunately the plot is quite coherent and you could imagine where she was going to with it. Nevertheless, I felt the same rage and frustration I experienced with Suite Francaise of never being able to read the finished product, due to the author's untimely death. I am delighted anyway that it has been published in spite of all these shortcomings, as it has been a crime that such a beautiful book has been hidden away for so many years. And unfinished or not, it is always a pleasure to read anything from Irene Nemirovsky. It brings tears to my eyes to realise her voice was extinguished way too early and we have been denied the honour of reading more of her fantastic books.

This book is a gem, I just love Ms Nemirovsky's style, it is so well written, her vivid description of the French country live is a delight to read. It is a very sarcastic and sharp critic to the sometimes petty and particular ways of the peasant mentality. The plot has so many clever twists; I could not put it down. Something I particularly loved about it was how masterfully the author mirrored the past and the present, showing how the more things change the more they stay the same.

A must read. Thank you Ms Nemirovsky, I'll eternally be a fan.